Thorarinn Stefansson — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:38 GMT

Very good article. As a (mostly) former html-coder/consultant/IA and a former teacher I understand your reservations about letting your students ‘loose’ on web design.

However, when reading your thoughts I wonder if using an available CMS system might help you focus the work. That way you could start the group with the prewritten content for a small site (ie a fictional company or organisation), assigning the students the work of designing presentation templates.

Preferrably this would be a rather simple CMS system with limited template options – forcing the students to deal with the larger issues of layout (navigation, columning, etc.) rather than get lost in creating visual details and fancy stuff.

This would also teach them to accept the limits of the available tools (the client not always having made the right decision in choosing tools).

Unfortunately I have no suggestions about such a system, but the web is full of simple CMS systems available for free. It is just a matter of finding them.

Scott Robinson — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:38 GMT

Thanks for an excellent article, James. I, too, teach an IA course where I’m trying to achieve similar goals as the first ‘half’ of your two-semester course. I am going to seriously consider some of your suggestions regarding more practical assignments – and the focus on design reviews instead of lectures!

I do have to agree that there is so much abstractness to the subject initially that I end up having to lecture for several weeks (with some good discussion slipped in) just to get the major concepts out there.

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